In foam assembly processes, such as foam mattress assembly, water based adhesives provide a safe, effective, and non-hazardous solution for bonding foam pieces together. However, many water based adhesives contain a large percentage of water. Therefore if a foam assembly bonded with water-based adhesives is packaged before fully dried, mold, unpleasant odors, substrate material breakdown, and the like may develop.
In particular, in foam mattress assembly and other assembled foam products, a fast growing trend in industry is to compress said assemblies into a box that may be shipped directly to customers. The boxes are sized such that traditional package shipping companies can handle them. These foam assemblies are constructed, and then enclosed in an impermeable plastic bag which is vacuumed and compressed so that it fits into the shipping boxes. Vacuuming alone to compress the package does not adequately extract water from the package, so trapped moisture is a common occurrence. Currently, the primary solution for this problem is to simply let the assemblies rest for a certain time period after construction to let moisture evaporate. However, this slows down the manufacturing and shipping process, and requires extra storage space at the manufacturing site.
One solution to minimize the presence of water or other solvents is to use a high solids adhesive, such as that in the range of 60% or more solids, typically 60-80% solids. However, high solids adhesives do not have sufficient wet tack for many foam assembly processes. Wet tack allows adhesive to rapidly hold the foam pieces together during assembly and also allows for some stretching of the foam when making the assembly. Further still, high solids adhesives do not provide a strong enough bond between foam elements to achieve foam tear when processing at room temperature.
Therefore, what is needed is a system that may allow for enhanced processing of foam assembly components and adhesives to allow for use of a high solids adhesive that achieves foam tear level adhesion of foam components.